Humor is infectious. It lightens burdens, inspires hope, connects us to others, increases our insight, keeps us grounded, focused, alert, and happy.
Laughter is a universal language that stimulates both sides of the brain. It allows us to get messages quicker and remember them longer. We all learn more when we are having fun. Writing this blog is a creative exploration in sharing thoughts that make me laugh, smile, or think. Thinking is the source of laughter. Welcome and have a nice day!

Thursday, June 18, 2015

The Advancement of Creativity

Laughing is good medicine,

but if one laughs for no reason,

one needs medication.

Given the enjoyability factor in creative thinking, which goes so far as to denounce the validity of reason in all the prerogatives it assumes in the practice of aesthetics, on the one hand, and in the spread of contemporary artworks interpreted sui generis, which once used to explore new mediums inspires new combinations of materials, on the other, aesthetics would seem to be alive and well in a world of technology and automation.

Creativity is so mixed with existential thought (principally because philosophers are artists who aim to sculpt the sound and beautiful thoughts) that one has the overall impression that aesthetics as a cogent core of intuitions, insights, inspirations, experiments and passions, as found in the entire classical world, has blossomed and this innermost core of identifying with self eternal.

Artists manifest the facileness of assumption. Aesthetics has not lost its identity; it merely transforms itself as new materials are made available.

Indeed, crowning the creativity of contemporary artworks, this flourishing of artists from all around the world to consider the aesthetics of intuitions, insights, inspirations, experiments and passions that artists by following by and large the aesthetic outline of the Human Creative Condition has further elaborated, manifesting the aesthetic spirit as its most vigorous.

Classical ideas of aesthetics retain their legitimate claims albeit in novel formulations and within a novel framework. But in this novel era, the era in which aesthetics has at last arrived or is arriving at its destination, the classical ideas with their claims are left rather in the painter's palette while new incipient ideas are being laid down as cornerstones of a gigantic edifice to be erected before the world stage.

It is indeed, from an overturn or priorities, with cognition and its specific mental intentionalities now assuming second place, while the creative act of the human being assumes first place, that this novel edifice receives the orientation for its inspiration.

Furthermore, although a proper place remains allotted to aesthetic consciousness, the subject with its originative extensions is not just alive in terms of its classical priority, but is turned inside out of its directing position to a limited realm for the newly recognized aesthetic principles of being, which is that of self-creativity-in-expression.
Thus at the very center of contemporary fields of aesthetic investigation, we find clues for the genuinely aesthetic mathesis universalis, that was the initial dream of Husserl and which, having gotten lost in his meanders, he failed to devise.

By thus going back to the creative virtualities of human existence and the principle of self-creative-expression, an entire new way of aesthetic expression emerges in which all rationalities transform themselves by nature of inventive fertility.

Herein this blog is situated volumes of examples, a splattering of ideas, points of view, and insights which come from otherwise diversely influenced conceptions and reflections offer Reader-Viewers COLORFUL PERSPECTIVES a compelling investigation of some major issues which reappear again in new formulations: principally the issue of a human individuals self-creativity-in-expression, insofar as he or she becomes and evolves with respect to the force which drives human imagination.

What has its classical flavor in rhyme and meter, color and composition, is clad now in modalities of the nuanced and modulated transmissible interplay of forces which allow the human being to create herself while co-creating something else, and this in the societal, vitally conditioned, significant networks of human inventiveness.

Human creativity with respect to the objects we create - artworks and inventions - go back to the fundamental virtuality of the Human Creative Condition of the moral sense, whence the morality, ethics, and regulations which human beings establish for their co-existence take flight.

The above-indicated set of principles which has overturned classical aesthetics, which at the same time standing counter to the overinflated tendencies of contemporary aesthetics, has been operative to various degrees throughout history, in particular since the 1960s, during which time the attention of numerous scholars was drawn to its novel vistas and principles.

Contemporary artists have attracted anew to these approaches. During at least the last five decades we have been witnessing the inception of a reinterpretation of the classical thinkers, finding in their thought ideas congenial to ours which have hitherto been overlooked, both in their dominant trends of interpretation as well as in excavating reflections and insights pertinent to our problems.

It is in this spirit that creativity has been advancing. Thus in all similar aspects of creation (blogs, Pinterest posts, Tumblr photos, social sharing feeds, and all not-before-traditional modes of Human-Creative-Expression) classical aestheticians are interpreted anew in the perspective of how their thoughts converge on our aesthetic sensibilities.

This blog is filled with examples of mixed-thinking via mixed-media, mixing genres, and interweaving photos to elevate words to new heights. For over nearly five years this blog has been devoted to exploring humor, wherever it may reside, so long as it is respectful of human dignity. In this vein a variety of styles have been smooshed together just to see what emerges. While not overtly funny, the enjoyability factor comes from not knowing the end result - not knowing how scholarly discourse combined with nonsensical absurdities might sound or look on virtual paper.

Living up to the blog's original title "Sophy 'softly' Laughing" posts often mimic their namesake - eliciting soft or quiet laughter. It is not the giant guffaws that draws attention to this blog. It is the earnest search for those things that delight and inspire wonderment. The "funny" aspect of searching for the experience of wonderment is how easily it can be found by comparing seemingly divergent thought systems in order to find the bridge that unites them. What is truly funny for me - recognizing humor is subjective - is how united all thought systems are when we search for connecting strands. But it is not a search for the visible, it is a search for possibilities and what-ifs.

For example: What if there really are Blacksheepologists in the world ... analyzing data in the hopes of uncovering the true origin of the elusive Black Sheep? Every family reportedly has a Black Sheep in the family. It could indeed be that in a world of 7 billion people one person might actually be reading the Black Sheep Scrolls in search of clues to determine whether or not there was indeed a time when counterfeit black hides were being mass-produced.

Even if this example only resides in my mind, and now in HTTF - it exists. I have imagined It into existence... a scenario that might not have ever been imagined had it not been for my own brand of Sophist humor ("Sophist" as in Sophy Laughing-inspired -vs- "sophist" as in those contemptible, degrading, disgraceful, disreputable, loathsome, reprehensible, infamously slimy, morally suspect rhetoricians of 5th century BCE Greece claiming to specialize in the tools of philosophy and rhetoric only to miss the mark entirely).

I conclude this post with the statement that I believe eternity to be everywhere. Everywhere is eternity. Thus we exist in eternity. Whether or not we eternally exist is an entirely different question. This matters because that which we do, we are doing for an eternity. If life does not bring us all the riches we desire, the love we deeply long for, or the health or beauty we wish were our own to possess, it can bring us other opportunities. The opportunity to create something from nothing. The opportunity to see each experience as one belonging to a certain space held within eternity. If we are held in eternity, which seems inescapable; if we cannot unexist the nature of our existence, as our bodies remain, and the 21 grams of spirit that escapes is still held within existence, i.e., eternity; then, we might as well do something that entertains us.

Writing and creating thoughts that had hitherto before not existed entertains me. If it did not, I would cease to do it. I am not required to write. I am not paid to write. I am not rewarded for writing beyond the rewards the experience itself affords me. Many people around the world are in a constant state of creative expression: doing, acting, and engaging with the world from a place that brings them no financial gain, no worldly acclaim, and no intense emotional engagement from the world - but they still do it.

Day in day out, people everywhere are inspired to create by nature of their fulgurating spirit. Whether a being is sharpening a stone hand axe for beautification rather than utility, whether an elephant is playing with a bouncy ball or rocking to Bach, whether insects are building nests rather than mindlessly roaming in perpetual search of sustenance, we are all held in an eternity whose natural state is one of Creative-Expression.

Rather than succumb to rationalism; rather than abandon my blogging to strategize other 'more important things' ... which would surely bring about a more shallow blend of mind manifesting "fin de sièce" moods regarding my use of time; if instead I tell myself I have all of eternity to write this blog AND still have extra time left over to strategize on those 'more important things' ... I have seized eternity for myself. Here I am crafting eternity as it pleases me.

If we are willing to temporarily suspend our long-cherished convictions and expectations which sidestep us more than they propel us forward to face the tests of progress for ourselves, we are more able to maintain their validity or well-foundedness as we discover for ourselves which convictions and expectations serve and which do not. It is only in the doing that we discover.

These thoughts vanish nearly as fast as they are presented. They are grains of salt lively enough only for metamorphosed fulfillment. Aesthetics worldwide is the promise and part-realization of this type of metamorphosed fulfillment of eternity's (and of this century's) long-lasting Creative Dream, it's fulfillment in the aesthetics of life and Creative Expression.

"My Bad" (Disclaimer)

A number of the images I post are not my original artwork. Much is sent to me by friends, some I find on Facebook or floating around the Internet. Whenever possible, I site the original artist. If I cannot find the original artist, and YOU are the original artist or you know the original artist, please contact me so that I can site the work accordingly. I apologize in advance for any inconvenience. Please know, if your original artwork was used, it was used for good!